Bad Feeling
It is not the
first time I have had this feeling – a bad feeling – like the end is near. This disease is such an emotional roller
coaster. Gram goes through phases; she’s
down for a few days, then back up and about and crazy. She stops eating for a while, and then just
as quickly as she stopped, she starts eating again. One never knows at this point. Her hospice record – being placed on and
discharged twice – demonstrates this idea well.
I look at each visit as potentially the last.
She slept all day
they told me when I called earlier to see if she was awake, in the hopes of bringing
her a fried chicken dinner. “She is not,”
the person on the other end of the phone said.
“And she will not wake up.” When I subsequently arrived and went to her
room, I pulled back the blankets to see if she needed her diaper changed. She opened her eyes and kept them open for a
while. But she was despondent and
distant. Her eyes looked at me and
beyond me at the same time – as if she saw something else. I talked to her and she just stared at
me. I turned the TV on and she just
stared at that. Her facial expression
was blank- vacant. I sat with her for a while,
her eyes jetting back and forth between the TV and me, but as if not seeing either. She dozed.
The room was so hot that I was down to my T-shirt by the time I
left. Gram, on the other hand, was
covered in blankets. There was an
occasional deep sigh and groans, but no movement. I hate seeing her like this.
I got up to leave
and kissed her on her forehead as I always do.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, as I always do. She nodded and in a whisper voice, mumbled some words that I
could not make out. She closed her eyes
once again. As I walked out, I thought, God, I hope I don’t get a call tonight.
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